Urban Ladder assembles a return plan

The furniture brand, which is aiming for nextday delivery and two-day deliveries in select cities by February 2017, has also revised its returns policy to cut it down from 27% early this year to 7% at present.Payal Ganguly | ET Bureau | November 28, 2016, 08:53 IST

After its recent decision to sell across online channels, online furniture brand Urban Ladder is targetting reduced returns and shorter turnaround time to develop a wider customer base and get its unit economics right.

The furniture brand, which is aiming for next day delivery and two-day deliveries in select cities by February 2017, has also revised its returns policy to cut it down from 27% early this year to 7% at present. This has also helped the furniture brand reduce scrapping of returned goods from 70% to 30-40%.

“We have stopped cancellation on décor and have implemented a strict seven-day window for accepting returns on furniture. We are also digging into data on the brand and customers. Sometimes customers just want a different product from the catalogue and we give them Urban Ladder vouchers,” said Kaustabh Chakraborty, senior vice-president of operations at Urban Ladder.

The furniture brand has raised close to $77 million from Sequoia Capital, SAIF Partners, Steadview Capital, Kalaari Capital and others across four rounds of funding and a round of debt financing. ET reported earlier this year that the brand had tied up with Amazon and Flipkart to sell part of its catalogue on the marketplaces to increase traction.

In order to reduce costs, the company is also working with marketplace Amazon India to build an alternate fulfilment system in partnership with third-party logistics players.

“We are selling only in the cities we are focused on as of now through the marketplaces and fulfil the orders on our own. With the marketplaces, we are piloting delivery of furniture, which comes in multiple boxes, which have to be assembled as opposed to a single box,” said Chakraborty. The brand has also cut down its turnaround time by half from an average of 9 days to 5 days in Bengaluru, by sampling batches of furniture instead of quality check on each piece of furniture that has to be shipped.